Dr. Lauren Ayton BOptom, PhD, FAAO, FACO, GCOT, GAICD
Associate Professor
Affiliate Member
Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Department of Surgery (Ophthalmology)
Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences
Centre for Eye Research Australia
A/Prof Lauren Ayton is a clinician-scientist with research interests in retinal disease, low vision and vision restoration. After completing her professional training in Optometry and a PhD at the University of Melbourne, A/Prof Ayton completed postdoctoral training in the area of ocular motor assessment in traumatic brain injury. She then took a position at the Centre for Eye Research Australia, where she was the Bionic Eye Clinical Team Leader and worked on several projects in age-related macular degeneration (2010 – 2017).
Between 2017 and 2019, A/Prof Ayton was the Director of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs at Bionic Eye Technologies, Inc., a USA startup company affiliated with Harvard and Cornell Universities. This experience cemented A/Prof Ayton’s passion for research innovation and entrepreneurship. A/Prof Ayton is now a Director of SPARK Melbourne, a University-led research incubator and industry mentoring program that originated from Stanford University. A/Prof Ayton has also been involved in the spinout of several start-up companies from academic discoveries.
Recently, A/Prof has been working on:
- Bionic eye clinical trials
- Phenotype/genotype correlations of inherited retinal diseases
- Industry-sponsored inherited retinal disease clinical trials
If A/Prof were to collaborate with another researcher, it would be a qualitative researcher. Her research group is beginning to do more collaborative work in qualitative research.
A/Prof has a brand new puppy called Murphy, a little brown cavoodle. He is adorable, even when weeing in inappropriate locations!
